Final Dawn: Escape From Armageddon (6 page)

     The girls shopped in small quantities because that’s how they would do it if they were a typical mom doing the weekly shopping. If they were to purchase twenty sets of sheets at one time they would attract attention. This way they wouldn’t. Over the course of a couple of weeks, they would get all the sheets they needed, change the penciled number to zero, and line the item off their list. Then they’d move on to other things.

     Once her cart was full, Hannah would check out and take her haul to her SUV, packing it in as tightly as she could.

     Then she would sit in the SUV and take a few minutes to update her shopp
ing list. She would erase the number needed for each item, subtract the number she’d just purchased, and enter the new number in its place.

     Once her list was updated, she would walk completely across the parking lot to enter through the doo
r opposite the one she’d just come out of. She’d get a new shopping cart and repeat the process, taking the precaution of going to a different cashier each time.

     It was a tedious way of stocking up on their essentials, but it was very effective, and in the end would
allow them to have what they needed without arousing any suspicion.

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     While the girls were shopping on this particular day, Mark was meeting with his construction contractors on the east side of Salt Mountain.

     The ruse they had very carefully dreamed up was that they were representatives of a large addiction treatment conglomerate based in
Los Angeles. They would be building a drug and alcohol treatment facility that would treat Hollywood celebrities, family members of the rich and famous, and the Washington elite.

     Part of the treatment program, they said, was to get the patients far away from their normal environment, where they wouldn’t be susceptible to their friends trying to sneak in drugs or alcohol for them, or encouraging them to leave the facility.

     They explained to the construction firm that, for the privacy of the people who would be treated at the facility, they wanted only the people involved in its construction to know it was out there. They even offered the contractor a fifty thousand dollar bonus if the project didn’t show up in the San Angelo newspapers or local news broadcasts.

     The contractor said keeping a large scale construction project a secret would be tough, but they were game to try. They had several things working in their favor, of course. The construction site was on a lightly traveled road. That stretch of Highway 83 never had more than a handful of cars on it, even
on its busiest days. And the construction site itself, like the adjacent mine, was several hundred yards off the highway, and out of view of the highway traffic.

     The contractor was careful not to put up any signs to mark the turn. Only a large surveyor’s stake with three bright orange flags on it. Most of the drivers had been there enough times to know where the turnoff was, and each of them, like all the other construction workers, were instructed to tell anybody who asked that they were building a warehouse for a feed company out of
San Angelo. Another warehouse in the middle of nowhere would not be a newsworthy item for local media outlets.

     Mark stood a
t the south end of a cleared and leveled field four hundred yards long and four hundred yards wide. Just inside the entrance to the compound would be an L-shaped three story dormitory building, which would have eighty one, two or three bedroom apartments.

     All of its
upscale apartments were accessible only from interior hallways, and there would be large meeting areas, a kitchen and dining room, recreation rooms, and storage rooms near the center of the building on the first floor. At the center of the building, where the two wings connected, there would be a huge lounge with a stone wood-burning fireplace.

     Each
apartment would have its own wall-mounted heating and cooling unit in each room, which the occupant could easily adjust. Just like in mid-range hotel rooms. And the building would have a full basement, which would be used later to stockpile goods and supplies.

     To the west of the
dormitory would be two greenhouses, constructed side by side, with a connecting breezeway so they could share equipment. Each greenhouse was one hundred feet long and fifty feet wide.

     North of the greenhouses was a large barn, separated down the middle by a floor-to-ceiling wall. A little farther
north was a large chicken coop.

     On the other side of the
apartments, on the east side of the compound, was a similar setup, excluding the greenhouses. A second large divided barn, another large chicken coop. On this side, there would be a large concrete pad, fifty yards square.

     In the northeast corner of the compound would be a small fishpond, stocked with catfish and perch. Although it would only cover half an acre or so, specifications called for it to be
thirty feet deep.

     The contractors weren’t by nature a curious lot. They were used to building things for people with odd requirements. But when they did ask, Mark had the answers readily available.

     No, he would tell them. They didn’t really expect to use all eighty apartments in the building for their patients. At least not initially. But as their reputation grew, and their success rate became well known, they just might start filling them up. And building the extra rooms now would avoid a renovation five years or ten years down the road.

     The two and three bedroom apartments were for those patients who did better when they had one or more roommates with similar addiction problems, so they could encourage each other.

     As for the double set of barns and hen houses? Mark explained that part of the treatment for any addiction was to keep a patient busy with a rewarding task. Their patients, while at the facility, would be expected to grow their own food, either in the greenhouse in cold weather months, or in the large open field north of the buildings in the warm months.

     Another aspect of patient care was giving them a goal, and nothing
encourages such goals like a little bit of healthy competition.

     So Mark would tell them that all of the patients would be assigned to one of two teams. The red team would compete with the blue team, and would be judged and rewarded on how well they took care of their livestock, how well their crops grew, and how self-sufficient they became. Whichever team scored the best each week would be rewarded with extra desserts, or more telephone time, or even the ultimate reward in any treatment setting… an early release.

     So the compound, Mark would explain, was set up to allow for the red team to have its own greenhouse, a barn for cattle and pigs, and a chicken coop. The blue team would have the same.

     It was all bull
, of course. Mark and Hannah had decided early on that redundancy was the key to survival. They wanted two greenhouses so that if one were damaged in a storm, they wouldn’t starve while trying to repair it.

     Further, each herd of livestock would be split in half and always kept separated. The cattle would be split into two small herds and would be kept in half of each barn. The pigs would be split in half and kept on the other sides of the barns.

     And half of the chickens would occupy each chicken coop.

     Their reasoning, of course, was
to divide the stock in case there was a disease outbreak. A case of hoof and mouth disease could wipe out a herd of cattle within weeks. But a second herd, which never mingled with the first, might be spared the same fate.

     The same held true for pigs and poultry as well. Separating the herds wouldn’t guarantee they wouldn’t all die from disease, but it greatly improved the odds of at least half their livestock surviving.
And since they’d likely have the only such livestock within a thousand miles or more, it was essential that they take extra precautions to keep them alive.

     Once all of the construction was completed within the compound, a twelve foot privacy fence, made of sheet steel, would be erected completely around the compound. For privacy, the contractor was told.
Hollywood celebrities wouldn’t want the paparazzi using telephoto lenses to take photos of them pulling weeds from a quarter mile away.

     The fence, it turned out, would be one of the most expensive parts of the project. Sheet steel wasn’t cheap, after all, and a fence that was twelve feet high and
four hundred yards square would require a lot of steel. The cost for the fence alone was over two hundred grand.

     But hey, after all, what good is $211 million dollars if you can’t spend it on something useful
?

     There were some other stipulations in the contract as well. In the interest of privacy for their patients, the treatment center wanted to be as self-sufficient as possible. There would be a huge septic system built for the
compound, so that there would be no need for sewer tie-ins with the city. Mark had already reviewed the geological survey and knew that there was a hundred year supply of water eighty feet below the site, so the contractor would dig wells to supply the residents and for irrigation.

     And the kicker would be the electrical requirements. A second wind turbine would be constructed in the northwest corner of the compound. It would
only be a third of the size as a commercial turbine, but capable of pulling twelve megawatts per hour on a breezy day.

     The power from the turbine would go directly into a large battery bank which would take up 200
square feet of floor space in the dormitory’s basement. Solar panels on the building’s roof would add more power to the battery system. And lastly, when battery capacity fell to forty percent or less, one of two large diesel generators would automatically kick in. All electrical requirements for the compound would be drawn from the batteries, which would never go dead.

    
Redundancy. It was the key to survival.

     Of course, the contractors were told that it was all being done in the name of self-sufficiency
and privacy. Their patients, the high-society celebrities and political figures, wouldn’t want outsiders like electric company repairmen coming in and maybe snapping their photos to splash across the front pages of the tabloids. So the electrical systems would all be maintained within the treatment center, by treatment center engineers.

     If it
all sounded strange to the contractors, they didn’t let on. They were used to building odd things at the whims of others, and as long as they got paid, they didn’t care.

     Mark stayed at the site long enough to verify for himself that everything was on schedule
.

     Then he walked to the top of
Salt Mountain. It was a mere 300 feet high, not really much of a mountain. But it was fairly steep in some places, and the winding path that avoided the steepest parts was almost half a mile long.

     Once at the top, Mark surveyed the area. As he
had hoped, he had a clear view of Interstate Highway 10, the main east-west thoroughfare that cut a path through central Texas.

    
He planned to install a video camera on this spot to keep an eye on I-10 traffic while they were in the mine. It would be tied in to the main security console, and would give them a good idea when it was safe to venture out.

     Also, by keeping track of the vehicle traffic after Saris 7 hit, they’d have a pretty good idea of how many others were able to survive.

     Mark made a mental note of the things he’d need to install the camera. The ground appeared to be rocky soil, instead of solid rock. He’d be able to install a pole with a set of post hole diggers and a 50 pound bag of sacrete.

     It would be a pain in the ass lugging that 50 pound bag up there, of course, but he’d manage. He looked to the south to get a quick estimate of how much coax cable he’d have to run to the nearest ventilation shaft, and how much flexible conduit he’d need to protect the cable from rats, rabbits and squirrels.

     It would take at least four trips to get everything up here, he figured. Then he kicked himself for coming up empty handed. He could have brought the pole and conduit up with him and left them up here. Since he didn’t plan in advance, he’d have to make an extra trip. He’d have to try to plan better in the future.

     He took out a little notepad he kept in his pocket. At least a dozen times a day, he found himself scribbling notes for himself. Things to buy, things to do, things to make. He very naively thought that stocking a shelter for forty people for five to seven years would be an easy thing to do.

     But it turned out that it was a lot more complex than he’d ever imagined. And every time he crossed an item off of his “to do” list, he thought up two more things to replace it.

     Mark looked at his watch and realized he needed to get back down off the mountain. He’d made a verbal co
mmitment to the various companies who were shipping things to them that someone would be at the mine every Wednesday, Thursday and Friday from nine to five. And he had two large generators and a load of lumber due in today.